Bribery and corruption—The Good Government League—Servant problem in California—The climate and its effect on wages—Off to Guadalajara.

My resignation being refused, I decided to stay and finish up the streets we were on. Of course after this the inspector had it all his own way, and he certainly led us a dance. I continued to look out for other work, and one day the chief sewer inspector told me that he could give us all the repaving work in connection with the sewers if there was anything in it for him. I reported this to my superintendent, and was told to give the inspector ten per cent., and the cashier told me the same thing. Arthur, I knew, would not have allowed it had he known it, but I was ordered not to report to him. The barefaced bribery, robbery, and swindling that went on in Los Angeles, in fact, in any town I knew anything about in the United States, was really surprising. However, I understand that so far as California is concerned all this has been changed since the prosecution and conviction of Reuff and Smidt, Mayor of San Francisco, 197and the formation of the Good Government League. A contractor was at the absolute mercy of the city officials and dared not say them nay; it was not that he wished to bribe but it was forced upon him if he hoped to remain in business at all. The same applied to his superintendents and foremen; if they were not ready to supply cigars and drinks for the inspectors their work would turn out so unsatisfactory that they did not hold their jobs long.

Between the city officials and the labour unions the contractor had a bad time. Los Angeles had not much trouble as far as the labour unions were concerned, but San Francisco was practically run by the unions during Mayor Smidt’s time (the man mentioned above), he himself being a union man. I do not mean to infer that I am against organised labour, for in many cases that is their sole defence against starvation wages. But when the unions allow such men as the Macnamara brothers (just convicted of the Times Building dynamiting) to guide their destinies, they cannot expect the outsider to sort the sheep from the goats. In “Frisco” a delegate came every day from the Labour Council to visit your gangs, and would order you to discharge any man who did not belong to their Order; if you complied they sent you men in the place of those discharged, and if you refused they posted you as 198“unfair,” and you could not get men. They called off the union bricklayers on a building once because we were working non-union men laying asphalt in the cellar. We told them that there was no such thing as an asphalt union in Los Angeles, so that the men could not belong to it, but this made no difference to them. So we had to wait till the building was completed, and then go back and finish the asphalt work. I have heard of some extraordinary lengths to which they would carry their “unfair list,” though I will not vouch for the following story, but tell it as it was told to me: A walking delegate came to notify a doctor that he was on the “unfair list.” The doctor was surprised, as he had always been most careful to deal in stores with union clerks, to pay his servants union wages, &c. The delegate said, “You have been attending Martin Brady who is ill with pneumonia.” “Yes,” said the doctor, “but I found out first that he was in good standing with the union.” The delegate replied that "Brady got his cold through getting wet at a farmer’s pump, and we have found out that the pump was not union made."

The servant-girl problem is worse in California than in any other place I have ever been to; they get wages running from $25 to $50 per month, and in consequence are as independent as can be. My 199wife got ill, so I went to one of the employment bureaus to see about a girl, and passed through the ordeal of my life. One woman I spoke to asked me how many there were in the family, and what I did for a living, and then, when I told her the house had only five rooms (as an inducement, I thought), she turned to me and said, “Five rooms, indeed, and I would like to know where you could put a girl!” One girl that came said, “I am so glad to see you have a piano as I do love to play in the evenings.” They tell of a Swedish girl whose mistress asked her, the first morning after she had arrived, if the table was laid for breakfast. The girl replied, "Everytang bane laid but the aigs, and I don’t tank dat bane part of ma job."

The climate of Los Angeles is much better than that of San Francisco, but it is not al............